I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
I've covered the hacker beat for Forbes since 2007, with frequent detours into digital miscellania like switches, servers, supercomputers, search, e-books, online censorship, robots, and China. My favorite stories are the ones where non-fiction resembles science fiction. My favorite sources usually have the word "research" in their titles.
Since I joined Forbes, this job has taken me from an autonomous car race in the California desert all the way to Beijing, where I wrote the first English-language cover story on the Chinese search billionaire Robin Li for Forbes Asia. Black hats, white hats, cyborgs, cyberspies, idiot savants and even CEOs are welcome to email me at agreenberg (at) forbes.com. My PGP public key can be found here.

Before “three” arrives, a shot reverberates across the overcast central Texas landscape. A tall, sandy blond engineer named John has just pulled a twenty-foot length of yellow string tied to a trigger, which has successfully fired the world’s first entirely 3D-printed gun for the very first time, rocketing a .380 caliber bullet into a berm of dirt and prairie brush.

“Fuckin’ A!” yells John, who has asked me not to publish his full name. He hurries over to examine the firearm bolted to an aluminum frame. But the first to get there is Cody Wilson, a square-jawed and stubbled 25 year-old in a polo shirt and baseball cap. John may have pulled the trigger, but the gun is Wilson’s brainchild. He’s spent more than a year dreaming of its creation, and dubbed it “the Liberator” in an homage to the cheap, one-shot pistols designed to be air-dropped by the Allies over France during its Nazi occupation in World War II.

Unlike the original, steel Liberator, though, Wilson’s weapon is almost entirely plastic: Fifteen of its 16 pieces have been created inside an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, a machine that lays down threads of melted polymer that add up to precisely-shaped solid objects just as easily as a traditional printer lays ink on a page. The only non-printed piece is a common hardware store nail used as its firing pin.

Wilson crouches over the gun and pulls out the barrel, which was printed over the course of four hours earlier the same morning. Despite the explosion that just occurred inside of it, both the barrel and the body of the gun seem entirely unscathed.

Wilson scrutinizes his creation for a few more seconds, then stands up again. “I think we did it,” he says, a little incredulous.

Last August, Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas and a radical libertarian and anarchist, announced the creation of an Austin-based non-profit group called Defense Distributed, with the intention of creating a firearm anyone could fabricate using only a 3D printer. The digital blueprints for that so-called Wiki Weapon, as Wilson imagined it, could be uploaded to the Web and downloaded by anyone, anywhere in the world, hamstringing attempts at gun control and blurring the line between firearm regulation and information censorship. “You can print a lethal device. It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show,” Wilson told me at the time. “Anywhere there’s a computer and an Internet connection, there would be the promise of a gun.”

On May 1st, Wilson assembled the 3D-printed pieces of his Liberator for the first time, and agreed to let a Forbes photographer take pictures of the unproven device. A day later, that gun was tested on a remote private shooting range an hour’s drive from Austin, Texas, whose exact location Wilson asked me not to reveal.

The verdict: it worked. The Liberator fired a standard .380 handgun round without visible damage, though it also misfired on another occasion when the firing pin failed to hit the primer cap in the loaded cartridge due a misalignment in the hammer body, resulting in an anti-climactic thunk.

The printed gun seems limited, for now, to certain calibers of ammunition. After the handgun round, Wilson switched out the Liberator’s barrel for a higher-charge 5.7×28 rifle cartridge. He and John retreated to a safe distance, and John pulled his yellow string again. This time the gun exploded, sending shards of white ABS plastic flying into the weeds and bringing the Liberator’s first field trial to an abrupt end.

The sixteen pieces of Defense Distributed's printed handgun, including spiral springs for its hammer mechanism and a nail used as its firing pin. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Michael Thad Carter for Forbes)

Update: Defense Distributed’s CAD file for the Liberator and its video introducing the gun are now online.

On the ride back to Austin after that first test-fire, Wilson seemed less than satisfied with the relative success of his 3D printed creation. He fixated on its misfiring and brooded about the tight deadline he’d given himself to work out its kinks before sharing the design on the Web. “I feel no sense of achievement,” he told me. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

And the most significant test of the Wiki Weapon was still to come, a moment of truth that may have been looming in Wilson’s mind after watching his first prototype explode into plastic shrapnel: Firing the Liberator by hand.

***

By Friday at noon, photographs of the world’s first 3D-printed gun published on this site set off a new round of controversy in a story that has shoved one of the most hyped trends in technology into one of the most contentious crossfires in American politics. New York Congressman Steve Israel responded to Defense Distributed’s work by renewing his call for a revamp of the Undetectable Firearms Act, which bans any firearm that doesn’t set off a metal detector. “Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” read a statement sent to me and other reporters.

Update: On Sunday, New York Senator Charles Schumer echoed Israel’s call for that new legislation to ban 3D-printable guns. “A terrorist, someone who’s mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon can essentially open a gun factory in their garage,” Schumer said in a press conference.

The screen of a Defense Distributed laptop showing the printable blueprint for the Liberator's body. (Click to enlarge.)

Israel and Schumer are hardly the first to oppose Wilson’s gun-printing mission. Last August, Defense Distributed’s fundraising campaign was booted from the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. In October, 3D printer maker Stratasys seized a printer leased to the group after it found out how the machine was being used. And Wilson says he’s lost access to two workshop spaces after those renting to him learned about his mission. Instead, Defense Distributed has had to move its workshop to a 38-square-foot room at the southern edge of Austin that’s about the size of a walk-in closet, hardly larger than the refrigerator-sized 3D printer it houses.

The second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST that Defense Distributed used to print the Liberator. It fills close to half of the group's tiny 38-square-foot workshop space. (Click to enlarge)

But at each roadblock, the group has found a detour. It’s raised funds from donors through the digital payment system Bitcoin, which thanks to that crypto-currency’s rising value now accounts for 99% of Defense Distributed’s assets, according to Wilson. In March it received a federal license to manufacture firearms, which Wilson has framed and posted on the wall of the group’s miniscule workshop. And it’s complied with the Undetectable Firearms Act by inserting a six ounce cube of non-functional steel into the body of the Liberator, which makes it detectable with a metal detector–Wilson spent $400 on a walk-through model that he’s installed at the workshop’s door for testing. “Our strategy is overcompliance,” he says. (There’s no guarantee, of course, that anyone who downloads and prints the Liberator will insert the same chunk of detectable metal.)

The group’s initial success in testing the Liberator may now silence some of its technical naysayers, too. Many skeptics (include commenters on this blog) have claimed that no plastic gun could ever handle the pressure and heat of detonating an ammunition cartridge without deforming or exploding. But Defense Distributed’s design has done just that. After the test-firing I witnessed, Wilson showed me a video of an ABS plastic barrel the group printed attached to a non-printed gun body firing ten rounds of .380 ammunition before breaking on the eleventh.

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uptil I saw the bank draft of $9106, I did not believe …that…my mom in-law was like trully erning money part-time at there labtop.. there neighbour has been doing this for less than seventeen months and resently cleared the depts on there home and purchased Ford. I went here, ………… ZOO80. ℂOℳ

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

This basically translates: since a well regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be taken away.

A lot of people seem to have some misconception of the roles militias held in the 18th and 19th centuries. Militias fought for their local communities and states, and were often called upon by the federal government to aid in promoting the nation’s interests (members were usually paid for these services). Militias upheld their own state’s constitution and laws, as well as the nation’s constitution and laws unless they encroached on those of state, in which case a militia might be called upon to defend the state against federal encroachments. This means that militias were bound by the majority opinion of the states in which they operated, and were not groups trying to force their sociopolitical beliefs and interests on the state or nation (this would instead be labeled as an insurrection, which organized militias would defend against).

The government didn’t have the funds to arm and train militiamen during this undeveloped period in American history, so it was necessary to sustain the effectiveness of militias by securing each person’s right to bear arms. Today, however, each state has its own National Guard which functions as its militia, command positions being appointed by elected state officials. Much of this change can be attributed to advancements in weaponry, some modern arms granting an operator the ability to destroy entire cities, and also requiring substantial training to operate.

In no part of the 2nd Amendment does it state that we have the right to own unregistered arms, just arms. There is nothing in the Constitution that bars a registry. It also does not elaborate on what types of arms we have the right to bear. The definition of arms would include everything from a pointy stick to bio-chemical weaponry (back then it was single-fire muskets). I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say I’d rather not see tanks, jets, RPG’s and automatic weapons on the street. One person could go nuts or be affiliated with a terrorist group and kill hundreds, possibly thousands of civilians in a densely populated area.

It is also worth mentioning that Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States of America grants Congress the right to call upon the general Militia (all men of a fighting age) to fight against insurgencies, which would be any group that, with violence, refuses to adhere to federal and state law.

Article II Sec. 2 of the Constitution: “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States.”

Article 1 Sec. 8 of the Constitution: “The Congress shall have power to…

Provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

OMG! You are so right. We must start proscecuting people for potential future crimes. this is the only way to make us all safe. we should also prosecute all men as potential future rapist and women as potential future prostitutes. after all they both have the physiological attributes to commit those crimes.

Sean, if you restrained your passion and at the very least read the second page of the article, or bothered to find out what Wilson’s aims and motives are, then you would realize how what you’re saying is playing right into his hands.

Your words show the old way of thinking, of a time when we were able to ban physical objects, when we were able to restrict information. That age is dying, and I sincerely recommend that you embrace this paradigm shift, so that you can join us all in a civil discussion about how the role of government will change, how law will be enforced, what the meaning of intellectual property will be, and the unimaginable potential of additive manufacturing that we have not even conceived of yet.

This Nation won freedom and independence using guns made by Americans and American guns are vital to preserving that freedom and independence. We are at risk now because liberal society creates sociopaths and barbarians, not because decent Americans are free.

Back in the 1700s, our biggest threat was the British Army. Today in the 2010s, our biggest threat is ourselves. When’s the last time the average citizen needed a firearm to protect an enemy invading our country?

You talk about Americans using guns as being “vital” to preserving that freedom and independence, but the last time Americans in general had to defend such freedom and independence, Benjamin Franklin was alive.

American guns are owned in plenty by the military. THEY defend our freedom and independence as a nation–not the average Joe at home 3D-printing guns to their personal pleasure.

We have a military so advanced, we can spot enemies from our satellites in outer space, send out an unmanned aircraft to take out spotted enemies, we have the most advanced air force in the world, and even though we’ve reduced our nuclear warfare some, we still lead the world in warhead stockpiles.

If all that proves too little, then we can always call on our many allies in NATO to aid us against an threatening invasion, seeing how anyone bold enough to maliciously invade America would prove problematic for anyone else who enjoy the Western lifestyle. So we’re pretty much covered on that issue of “preserving that freedom and independence” without the help of ordinary citizens even owning guns, let alone 3D-printed guns.

To be honest, if American citizens didn’t have guns at all, we’d still be in the same position as a nation as free and independent. Again, we have a superior military might to thank for that fact.

Though, I should be clear that I’m not speaking against real guns here, nor is the issue at hand about real guns–bringing up the history of America with real guns is a red herring.

The original issue the commenter Sean addressed is that 3D-printed guns shouldn’t be freely available to just anyone with a 3D printer and an Internet connection.

Since real guns ARE legal in most the U.S., if I TRULY wanted a weapon to defend my home with, I’d legally register, properly train with, and legally buy a real gun. Keeping the information of 3D-printed guns legally-free and available is only catering to those who’d much rather avoid buying a legal and otherwise metal-detectable gun.

If you’ve got so much of a security problem that you wish to 3D-print a gun, you probably need to invest in a REAL gun. Otherwise, this is only leaving the door wide open for hobbyists-level gunsmiths to create a nuisance–contributing more to the one we already have with real guns.

By the way, you might blame “liberal society” for creating sociopaths and barbarians, but that’s complete nonsense. Sociopaths and barbarians grow where the legal system is weak in properly checking for them and judicial consequences aren’t feared. Nobody fears our legal consequences anymore. And why not? If I commit an atrocious crime, I’ll be taken cared of for the rest of my life in prison afterwards–that is, if I’m not released from prison early first. Where there is a lack of fear, there is a growth of boldness.

People like you are so inclined on preserving total “liberty” that they forget that great control is necessary for keeping total “liberty” from destroying itself from being TOO “free.”

They already do it. Open container is an example. Because I COULD be drinking it and IF I drink enough of it…it COULD impair me enough to cause an accident. Instead of just charging the person with what happened….we created all these laws just to nip it the butt.

Because for the 99.99% of the times pressure cookers are used to cook! DUH! What are guns used for? to kill! That is the primary purpose and the guy says so in the article. Please use some common sense!